The Adaptive Curmudgeon: "I worry that should patriots get motivated and violent they’ll be too damn good at it."

Posted By: WatchmanDate: Wednesday, 24-Aug-2016 12:40:45

The Z-Blog posted wise thoughts in On Being Revolting in the Modern Age:

“Certainly voting for Trump sends a message, but messages need a sender and a receiver. If the people on the other end refuse to acknowledge the message being sent, then it’s not really a message. The Olive Branch Petition was the last ditch effort by the Colonist to avoid a breach with the mother country, but the King’s refusal turned it from a message to him into a message from him. That message was clear to the colonials. They could either submit unconditionally or prepare for war. A Trump win followed by a unified refusal by the political class to cooperate would also be clear message.”

You’d be hard pressed to find any living being who likes the 2016 election cycle so one more blogger bitching about it (self included) is irrelevant. But, just for the record, I’ve spent decades observing D.C. and thinking “these people are playing with fire”. I perpetually wish they’d quit trodding upon large groups of people. No good can come of it.

The Z-Blog adds the usual about the media giving up on even the appearance of journalism:

“A little girl skins her knee and there is a news team there to blame Trump in a four hour TV special. Hillary Clinton is caught running a pay-for-play scheme and no one can be bothered to ask her why she went to the trouble of installing an illegal e-mail system in her bathroom.”

While that’s all true I haven’t expected news from the news in decades. Nobody has.

My big observation of the “Hillary’s private server with State secrets affair” wasn’t about the press. It was about the people; or rather roughly half of the people. A moment passed that felt colder and more unsettling than the usual “they’ve fucked us again” situation.

Think about it like this; the FBI infuriated half the electorate and that half… did nothing. Yet it wasn’t a moment of defeat. It wasn’t a wail of despair, not gloom, not anger, not resignation, not desperation. It was a subdued tone of quiet finality. An acceptance that corruption is so deep that no one, nobody at all, can pretend otherwise.

We all know it. Jerks with badges will shut down a child’s lemonade stand, convict your car of a crime, demand a license for your dog, zone your house into oblivion for a salamander, and invade nations you’ve never heard of… but everyone everywhere knows that mishandling State secrets will put anyone in the clink. Or at least it formerly would.

The FBI just demonstrated they’re afraid to enforce the law when Hillary is involved. They did it in front of God. They did it on live TV. Like the moon landing, it’s an event with a clear “before” and a clear “after”. I think it unwise to have fomented such a moment.

The left side of the spectrum didn’t notice. They were busy rioting over cops being too racist, or not protecting them enough, or maybe wanting more cops but only when cops hug them, or maybe they need a safe space or whatever. Cars got burned, screams were uttered, some cops got shot, a person got blown up with a robot bomb defuser. As photogenic and ugly as it was, it also blew off steam.

The silence on the opposite side of the fence didn’t release a damn thing. It held that pressure. Their attachment to rule of law means blocking a road or smashing a Hyundai is not their style. It’s stupid, wasteful, and inefficient. Hillary and her minions might have thought silence demonstrated their total dominion. I doubt that. Americans are a prickly lot. Many will join the herd but many will not. Ever.

When a big bunch of them see something infuriating and then collectively clam up it’s not because they’re afraid. It’s because they’re thinking. Thinking hard. “What will happen next. How will it affect me. What is my best course of action.” The FBIs abdication led to the eerie and deafening silence of a people with a deep focus.

There are two kinds of silence. One is “you’ve beaten me and I shall go nurse my wounds”. The other is a grim “keep your powder dry” mentality. It is without humor and full of malice. It’s the intelligent observation reserved for when there’s wolf on the periphery and you’re not afraid of it but fully aware that it’s a predator and you should react accordingly. It reminds me of Ralf Waldo Emerson’s admonition “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” I’d much rather have seen the right wing burning cars and spray painting American flags on walls… but the quiet ones don’t roll that way. And really, who thinks a riot and a burned car does any good?

I’m not advocating violence. That shit sucks. I want nothing to do with it. I never will. I like my nation. I want it to be peaceful. Violence is the failure to find a more reasonable solution.

Also I’m a little worried. When Americans get motivated they’re not ineffective. They’ll put a man on the moon, build a 1,000 horsepower NASCAR, win every damn gold medal they can, whatever. I worry that should they get violent they’ll be too damn good at it.

And that’s what makes me nervous. It’s not the dog that barks that you need to watch. It’s the one you’ve kicked several times but it didn’t back down. When a beaten dog backs off, shakes out the kinks, and then looks you in the eye without a hint of cowering.; that’s when you’ve made the dog into something you ought not have. Anyone sane would have know to not kick the damn dog in the first place… but once it’s done I’m not sure what defuses the moment.

Z-Blog is thinking American Revolution. I’m more worried about the Civil War. I’ve been reading a lot of American history. Something I didn’t understand until recently is that neither side really thought it was going to happen. For eighty odd years everyone had always come to their senses. The general attitude was sanity would prevail at the last minute. But it didn’t. Too many people played with fire and the nation stumbled backwards into horror. Hillary’s endemic corruption unnerves me because it’s a flame seeking a fuse. She’s played with fire so long she can’t imagine life without it. She can’t be boring. She can’t play by the rules. She’s dangerous to everyone, regardless of their opinion because, she can’t let sleeping dogs lie.